Lengthy 2020 MLB Season Could Compromise 2021

When – or if – there is a Major League Baseball season in 2020, owners and players vow to play as many games as possible.

A full 162-game schedule seems highly unlikely for a sport shut down March 12 during spring training because of the coronavirus pandemic. While no one is projecting a date for when the season will open, it certainly isn’t going to happen before late May.

President Donald Trump has extended social distancing guidelines through April 30. Even if the country returns to normalcy May 1, and plenty of data suggests it won’t, players will likely need at least three more weeks of a spring training-type setting to be ready to play games that count.

That would make Memorial Day – May 25 – as the likely earliest starting date. Thus, opening day would come just a day short of two months after its originally scheduled date of March 26.

Owners and players have agreed to extend the season into November and maybe even December. Still, 162 games seems like a stretch as time for the postseason must also be factored.

The sides have talked about adding two doubleheaders a week and all but eliminating off days in order to get as close to 162 as possible.

Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Jameson Taillon, his team’s representative to the Major League Baseball Players Association, admits players have concerns about a truncated season.

“We have to be extremely cognizant of player’s health,” Taillon said. “Even doing a second spring training buildup, we’re going to have be careful with everyone going into this. Make sure we’re communicating with the training staff and we’re collaborative in our approach with not only Major League Baseball, but with our own teams and our specialists.”

Taillon says the three-week idea for a restarted spring training could change.

“The longer we get away from our original spring training, the longer the buildup would have to be,” he said.

MLB plans to expand the roster limit from 26 players to 29. In theory, that should help reduce some of the workload on all players. especially starting pitchers who must rebuild arm strength and endurance.

Yet, it begs the question as to why baseball is so adamant about having as lengthy of a season as possible?

Some of the reasons are noble, such as providing entertainment to a nation that will have certainly be worn down mentally and physically by the pandemic.

And anyone who is up on their sports clichés knows baseball is a marathon, not a sprint. No other major professional North American team sports league plays as many games as MLB and the sports prides itself on that aspect.

However, there is also one very practical reason for the clamor of squeezing in as many games as possible.

Please allow Cincinnati Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart to explain.

“It goes without saying that, as players, we want to play as many games, not only because we love playing, but also we want to make as much money as possible. That’s the God’s honest truth about it,” Barnhart, the Reds’ player rep, said on a conference call with reporters earlier this week.

“And the same goes with ownership and all of that. So, everybody wants to make money.”

More games played means more revenue generated for the owners. In turn, it would mean less money reimbursed to Fox, ESPN and Turner for cancelled games as well as myriad regional sports networks.

While players will receive a percentage of their 2020 salaries through the first 60 days of the scheduled season, their total salaries will be prorated to the number of games played overall.

So, labor has a financial stake as well in a long season.

Yet it is hard not to wonder player safety will be compromised by extending the season into possibly December.

Not so much for 2020 but 2021.

Spring training begins in the second full week of February. If a 2020 season runs past Thanksgiving, it would give players barely more than two months before they would start reporting to spring training camps in Florida and Arizona.

Recovery time would be limited and the residual effects would seemingly be more injuries because of fatigue.

In the end, MLB could wind up with two compromised seasons.